So I’ve set myself a target to write one of these a week, which was fine during the summer holidays, but now the cold slate-grey reality of term-time has set in, and I’m here at 20:08 on Sunday just beginning. I’m not just beginning, of course — I’ve notes and ideas kicking about — but who knows how this is going to go? This is as far as I’ve got with this post. It could be a failure. I’m going to smoke-and-mirrors you into believing (whoever you are, dear and rare reader!) that it isn’t a failure.
You see, I was stuck for ideas, so I asked myself, “What was the narrative of the week just gone?” What came back was a rather meta-answer, and not what I was expecting (if I was expecting anything). Here’s what came back: a question: Why are you looking for a narrative?
It’s a damned good question (I find the best questions are those that unexpectedly challenge quasi-axioms), which has — or at least, I hope has — given shape to this post. Why do I want to find a narrative? Does such an inquiry imply that any narrative found, by dint of its needing to be found, is a false narrative? Does making the latter week into a narrative do something to it that wasn’t already done? And if I am doing something to that week that wasn’t already done, am I creating a fiction, a lie?
There’s a lot to unpack there. Though fiction has its etymological roots in fictionem, ‘a feigning, a fashioning’, I don’t see fiction as a falsehood, in the sense that I don’t think fiction is deceptive. Well: I don’t think fiction is inherently deceptive, if one takes ‘deceptive’ as a deliberate act of obfuscation. Fiction is explorative: it lives in imagination’s liminal space. But, if I feel I need to find the narrative in the week just done, why is this? Why must I find anything at all? Why are my raw experiences not enough?
I read an article recently about how it is dangerous to frame life as a story. It argues that not everybody feels the need to narrativise their lives, nor does anybody naturally, either. And
the narrative here is that I am tired, and that I want to go to sleep.
What? No! Finish the post! You have a duty!
A duty? To whom, exactly? About eight people read these. I really wouldn’t worry.
Well, I do worry. Almost constantly. By the way, who the hell are you?You? I’m me.
Okay. Look, this is getting more … meta than I thought it would, and I’m not sure we have the panache to pull it off.
Pull what off, exactly?
This! This whole … you must realise what we’re doing here. We’re being metafictional. This isn’t big or clever. Now get back to the post.
Back to the post, huh? In which we were trying to be big and clever?
We?
Sure.
Doesn’t that nail our colours to the mast? Frame us as multiple selves? Is this the way you’re going to claim your belief in multiple selves, Alex?
I DON’T KNOW WHO YOU THINK YOU’RE ADDRESSING. THIS IS ALEX. I AM ALEX’S INNER SENSE OF SELF.
And there’s one of you, is there?
BE SILENT.
(This post has ended up eating itself, but it doesn’t matter, because only eight people read this, and they won’t know that your postmodern posturing is a mask for your attention-deficit ways, or your inability to bring this post to a proper conclusion …)
Who the hell ARE you, anyway?
You? Who the hell are YOU?
I REALLY MUST PROTEST –
Who I want to be is not who I am who I want to be is not who I am
I am fixated on future selves whose skin I must inhabit
Do not tell me I cannot
Why
Are
They
So
Far
Away
Bring me back
Who are you?
(I am a kiss upon a cheek. It is morning. I am not ready. But she kisses me upon the cheek and I blearily see her bright blue eyes and she says DADDY DADDY DADDY and her chaotic nothing is the music of heaven and it is everything)
COME
HOME
BECAUSE
HOME
IS
WHERE
YOU
ALREADY
ARE.